Attendance at ICANN’s recent meeting in Copenhagen was down about 8% on the comparable meeting a year earlier in Marrakech, according to ICANN statistics.

There were 2,089 at the Denmark meeting, down from 2,273 reported a year ago in Morocco.

The decline appears to be largely a result of relatively lower local participation. Africa is usually under-represented at ICANN meetings, but there was a surge in Marrakech, with almost 956 attendees hailing from the continent.

About half of Copenhagen participants — 1,012 people, of which 417 were first-timers — were European.

The number of remote participation attendees was much higher in Copenhagen. ICANN counted 4,428 unique users logging into Adobe Connect meeting rooms, compared to 3,458 in Marrakech.

Both Copenhagen and Marrakech, ICANNs 55 and 58, are designated as “community forums”, meaning they follow the traditional ICANN schedule. ICANN 56 was a shorter, policy-focused meeting and ICANN 57 was a longer meeting with a focus on outreach.

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee has clashed with its board of directors over the lack of protections for two-letter domain names that match country codes.

The board has now formally been urged to reconsider its policy to allow registries to sell these names, after angry comments and threats from some GAC members.

Governments from Brazil, Iran, China and the European Union are among at least 10 angered that the names are either not adequately protected or only available for exorbitant prices,

The debate got very heated at ICANN 58 here in Copenhagen on Wednesday morning, during a public session between the GAC and the board, with Iran’s outspoken GAC rep, Kavous Arasteh, almost yelling at Chris Disspain, the board’s point man on the topic.

Arasteh even threatened to take his concerns, if not addressed, to the International Telecommunications Union when it convenes for a plenipotentiary next year.

“Your position is not acceptable. Rejected categorically,” he said.

“The multistakeholder process was not easily accepted by many countries. Still people have difficulty with that,” he said. “We have a plenipotentiary coming in 2018, and we will raise the issue if the matter is not resolved… It is not always commercial, government also has some powers, and we exercise our powers.”

Invoking the ITU is a way to turn a relatively trivial disagreement into an existential threat to ICANN, a typical negotiating tactic of governments that don’t get what they want from ICANN.

The relatively trivial disagreement in this case is ICANN’s decision to allow gTLD registries to release all previously reserved two-letter strings.

In November, ICANN approved a policy that released all two-letter strings on the proviso that registrants have to assert that they will not pass themselves off as affiliated with the countries concerned.

Registries also were given a duty to investigate — but not necessarily act upon — governmental complaints about confusion.

ICANN thinks that this policy is perfectly compliant with the GAC’s latest official advice, supplied following the Helsinki meeting last June, which asked ICANN to:

urge the relevant Registry or the Registrar to engage with the relevant GAC members when a risk is identified in order to come to an agreement on how to manage it or to have a third-party assessment of the situation if the name is already registered.

Disspain patiently pointed out during Wednesday’s session that governments have no legal rights to their ccTLD strings at the second level, and that most of the complaining governments don’t even protect two-letter strings in their own ccTLDs.

But some GAC reps disagreed.

China stated (via the official interpreter): “We believe the board doesn’t have the right or the mandate to decide whether GAC members have the right over two-character domain names.”

While no government spoke in favor of the ICANN policy on Wednesday, the complaining governments do appear to be in a minority of the GAC.

Despite this, they seem to have been effective in swaying fellow committee members to issue some stern new advice. The Copenhagen communique, published last night (pdf), reads:

a. The GAC advises the ICANN Board to:

I. Take into account the serious concerns expressed by some GAC Members as contained in previous GAC Advice

II. Engage with concerned governments by the next ICANN meeting to resolve those concerns.

III. Immediately explore measures to find a satisfactory solution of the matter to meet the concerns of these countries before being further aggravated.

IV. Provide clarification of the decision-making process and of the rationale for the November 2016 resolution, particularly in regard to consideration of the GAC advice, timing and level of support for this resolution.

ICANN is being compelled to retroactively revisit a policy that was issued in compliance with previous GAC advice, it seems.

The next ICANN meeting is being held in Johannesburg in June, so the clock is ticking.

Two-letter domains are valuable properties even in new gTLDs. With each expected to sell for thousands, two-letter names are likely to be a multimillion dollar windfall for even moderately sized portfolio registries.

But general counsel John Jeffrey noted that there have been multiple similar complaints to the Ombudsman over the last year or so, possibly as a result of increased awareness that such complaints are possible.

While the text of the resolution has not yet been published, I believe it’s approving a lightly modified version of the policy draft outlined here.

That draft sought to ban activities such as “sexually suggestive touching” and “lewd jokes” at ICANN meetings. A laundry list of characteristics (such as race, gender, disability) were also given special protection.

What’s possibly more interesting than the new policy itself is the manner in which the policy was approved.

It was the first time in goodness knows how many years — definitely over 10, and I’m tempted to say over 15, but nobody seems to know for sure — that the ICANN board has deliberated on a resolution in public.

By “in public” I mean the 30-minute session was live-streamed via Adobe Connect from an undisclosed location somewhere at ICANN 58, here in Copenhagen. An in-person live audience was not possible for logistical reasons, I’m told.

Apart from the first few years of ICANN’s existence, its public board meetings have usually been rubber-stamping sessions at the end of the week-long meeting, based on discussions that had gone on behind closed doors days earlier.

So today’s session was a significant attempt to increase transparency that is likely to be welcomed by many.

Unfortunately, its existence could have been communicated better.

For the first 15 minutes, there were no more than 19 people in the Adobe room, and I believe I may have been the only one who was not ICANN staff or board.

After I tweeted about it, another 10 or so people showed up to listen.

Given that increased board transparency is something many sections of the community have been clamoring for for years, one might have expected a bigger turnout.

While the meeting had been prominently announced, it was not listed on the official ICANN 58 schedule, so had failed to make it onto the to-do lists of any of the iCal slaves pottering around the venue.

The session itself came across to me as a genuine discussion — not stage-managed or rehearsed as some had feared.

Directors raised issues such as the possible increased workload on the Ombudsman, the fact that the current Ombudsman (or Ombudsperson, as some directors referred to him) is male, and the availability of female staff members to receive “sensitive” complaints.

Today’s open session is part of a “pilot” and is due to be followed up on Sunday with another, which will discuss ICANN’s fiscal 2018 operating plan and budget.

Again, turning up to watch in person will not be possible, but the 90-minute session will be streamed live at 0745 UTC here.

At least two senior-level ICANN community members, including a new member of its board of directors, have been affected by US President Donald Trump’s controversial travel restrictions, imposed this weekend on the citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations.

The so-called “Muslim ban” has also attracted criticism from other members of the community.

Kaveh Ranjbar, Amsterdam-based chief information officer for RIPE/NCC and an ICANN director, said that he is unable to attend this week’s board retreat in Los Angeles because he holds an Iranian passport.

“I have checked this with ICANN’s general counsel and they have tried an external counsel with expertise in immigration,” Ranjbar told DI. “Their advice was that I might be able to travel but they were not sure. As you know the situation is really fluid and things change real fast.”

“After checking with the airline and looking at similar cases, I decided not to even try, because I did not want to risk deportation or being detained in the US,” he said.

Ranjbar was born in Iran but holds dual Dutch-Iranian citizenship.

He said he will participate remotely in the board retreat, likely until with 3am each day.

“However, the work of ICANN board is no different than any other board, it is mostly free exchange of ideas and discussing and challenging positions, outside of the formal setting of the meetings, that’s how you get a feel on your other colleagues positions and will be informed enough about their positions which will enable you to support or oppose with proper grounds and arguments,” he said. “I will miss that critical part.”

Non-Commercial Users Constituency chair Farzaneh Badiei is also affected. She’s Iranian, but recently relocated to the US on an academic visa.

She told NCUC members that she’s effectively stuck there, unable to attend an intersessional meeting in Iceland or ICANN’s March meeting in Denmark, for fear of not being allowed to return.

“I have been advised to take precautionary measures in light of the current draft executive order that might not allow current visa holders re-entry to the United States,” she said.

ICANN is still evaluating the situation.

“We are still trying to fully understand the potential impact of the President’s Executive Order on our community, Board and staff travelers. We want to ensure ICANN’s continued accessibility and openness,” a spokesperson said on Sunday.

ICANN does have Iranian-born staffers, but I’m not aware that any have reported travel problems as a result of the Trump move.

The travel ban has drawn fire from other related organizations.

Internet Society CEO Kathy Brown wrote that she was “deeply troubled” by the ban, adding:

Not only will the purported bans place an unwarranted burden on people in our organization, it is an anathema to the Internet Society whose values rest firmly on a commitment to an open, globally connected community dedicated to the open, global Internet. We are encouraged by the countries who have rejected the U.S. action this weekend and by the human rights organizations that have stood in solidarity with countless refugees and travelers who were so abruptly halted in entering the U.S.

The chairs of the IETF, IAOC and IAB indicated in a joint statement that they may reconsider holding future meetings in the US:

the recent action by the United States government to bar entry by individuals from specific nations raises concerns for us—not only because upcoming IETF meetings are currently scheduled to take place in the U.S., but also because the action raises uncertainty about the ability of U.S.-based IETF participants to travel to and return from IETF meetings held outside the United States….

Our next meeting is planned for Chicago, and we believe it is too late to change that venue. We recognize, however, that we may have to review our other planned meeting locations when the situation becomes clearer. We are already reviewing what to do as far as location for the next open North American meeting slot.

Meanwhile, the Internet Governance Project’s Milton Mueller blogged:

This has significant implications for Internet governance. Coordination and policy making for a global medium based on cooperation and voluntary standards requires open transnational institutions. Participation in those institutions requires the ability to freely travel. The United States can no longer be considered the leader, either politically or ideologically, of an open global Internet if its own society is mired in protective barriers… What a stroke of good fortune that the prior administration succeeded in freeing ICANN from the U.S. government in its waning months.

The travel ban is said to be “temporary”, lasting just 90 days, but some fear it may evolve into a permanent fixture of US policy.